Freddie Hubbard

When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles and Dizzy it was very difficult.

They always want to sell me as a hard bopper.

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.

How do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don’t you ask him? And besides, maybe we’d all like to be like Miles, and just haven’t got the guts.

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

Look for the one who’s not smiling and play to that person. Once you’ve got that person, you’ve got the whole club.

I fell in love with Jazz when I was 12 listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of Jazz in New York on the radio.

I often wonder whether Negroes like myself who are pretty well known help out at all in breaking down barriers.

You can have tone and technique but without originality you ain’t really nowhere. Gotta be original.

I cannot play a lie. I have to believe in what I play or it won’t come out.

I can play all I know in eight bars.

You can separate the men from the boys and ballads.

What don’t I want to learn? I have how-to books, history, nature. Ain’t nobody here saying, ‘You’d better learn this.’ But I still think I’ve got a head on my shoulders, and it pleases me.

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.

I’d like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I’ve heard.

I’ve always depended upon my own melodic instinct, instead of scale like formulas.

Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.